Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (20 page)

“Another time, on another trip down there, they gave me all these fucking drugs, they gave me like Valium, Ecstasy, coke.
They gave me them to hold. They said hold on to these, because they had to go back outside the club and get something. They
were gone six, seven, eight hours. I couldn’t find them. So I did all the drugs. I did them all. They came back and they found
me, and my friend Mike Fusco said that I was on the sofa like fucking dead, and that he found me and that Benny was like,
‘Where’s the drugs?’ And I said, ‘I did them. I did them all.’ And they said they had to carry me home. I don’t even remember
it.”

When he was down in Miami—and he was there every week or two, with or without Stefanie—he would often run into his old friends,
the two Chrises. Chris Wolf and Chris Pa-ciello. Chris Wolf, the Hanover Sterling ace broker, had recovered nicely. Plastic
surgery performs miracles. Now you could barely see the scar on his face from getting thrown through that plate-glass window
on Broadway, during the harbor-toss and safe-stealing incident a couple of years before. Chris Paciello was from Staten Island
and was known to Louis from the old days as a kind of street investment banker. His specialty was raising capital for himself
by using a loaded gun. Somehow Chris Paciello wound up in South Beach, was operating a nightclub and showing up in the gossip
columns, dating models.

Paciello was known to Louis as Chris Binge-a, or Binja—it wasn’t set down in writing as a rule, so the spelling is approximate.
That’s Binge-a as in “binge.” Chris Wolf and Chris Paciello had little in common except for substance usage and that both
had changed their names—Chris Wolf to conceal Italian ancestry, and Chris Paciello (nÉe Ludwigsen) to assume Italian ancestry.
It was part of what one New York pol used to call the “gorgeous mosaic.”

“We used to hang around with Chris Wolf and he was just nuts. He’d run around the Liquids club in South Beach, putting hits
of Ecstasy in people’s mouths. Me and Benny used to try to avoid him, because he’d want to stick ’em in your mouth. He’d say,
‘Come on, let’s fucking party!’ He used to carry a bag—these pills were twenty-five dollars each—and he used to carry a bag
of like a thousand of them and just give them to fucking everybody. He’d go, ‘Here. Here. Here.’ Just give them out.

“Liquids was Chris Binja’s club, Chris Paciello. He would binge, just disappear for a month. He was nuts, that Christoo. He
was nuts, we all were nuts. Chris Wolf was nuts because he would just OD like it was a fucking ritual. They were always taking
him to the hospital. He was always foaming from the mouth somewhere in the corner. I mean, these are people—we’d go on the
phone and get like a million dollars from investors and then we’re laying on couches half dead, foaming from the mouth. Every
once in a while it used to just hit me, imagine our clients seeing us now. Can’t even talk.”

That was a definite disadvantage of taking drugs. But there were social benefits to chemistry, apart from its self-medicating,
stress-relief function. Just as Benny and Louis bonded during their Missions, drug use was a necessary social skill. Just
as strip clubs like Scores were now assuming the same role as mahogany-paneled private clubs for previous generations, drugs
were now supplanting alcohol to promote conviviality and good fellowship. In the 1960s, drugs were a counter-cultural phenomenon.
Louis and Benny weren’t part of any counterculture that they were aware of. They were, after all, members of the Establishment.
Wall Streeters. Stockbrokers. Drugs were now apolitical, equal-opportunity mouth-foamers. They made bad times good. They made
good times great. Sure, they could make great times bad, if you took too much. They had to watch that. They didn’t.

Louis kept about $1,500 worth of coke in his safe at all times, right alongside the stacks, for easy access. It was important
to have coke available at all times. But when Louis and Stefanie joined Benny and Michelle at the Sandals resort in Jamaica
on New Year’s Eve, Louis and Benny couldn’t very well take the drugs with them on the plane. That threatened to deprive them
of a necessary element in greeting the upcoming, outstanding year of 1995. But everything turned out okay. They found a Jamaican
guy on the beach who had what they needed.

While they were in Jamaica they ran into Craig Kallman, who was staying at another resort and arranged to meet them. They
had mixed feelings about Kallman. He still hadn’t come through with referrals. But Louis and Benny were still hoping that
he would do what he had promised. They had made good money for him, after all. It was the least he could do. In their new
life they would have to get used to running into big shots like Kallman when they were on vacation. He was a cool youngish
guy, in his thirties. But he was—they couldn’t put their finger on it—maybe a little standoffish.

They still had hopes the Real Wall Street was in their future. But right now, the Chop House Wall Street was too much fun
to leave. Life was drugs and sex and money and money and money and money. So much money that some of it had to be, almost
literally, flushed down the toilet.

One of the nice things about having money is that you can buy off your guilt.

As the piles in his safe multiplied like horny cockroaches, Louis slowly began to realize that he would have so much to confess,
if he confessed, that the penance would set a new record in the Vatican or St. Patrick’s Cathedral or wherever. There would
be no Hail Marys doled out by the priest or the Pope or whomever. He would be, maybe, nailed to a cross right in the middle
of Battery Park City. He would hang from the cross and Stefanie and Deenie and his customers—everybody—would be jeering.

Sure he was guilty. He knew it. He ignored what the priests taught him, he thought it was a lot of crap, but some of that
bullshit seeped into his brain. He couldn’t help it. If he could have taken out his brain and tossed it in the dishwasher,
he would have done it. But he couldn’t, so he did the next best thing. He bought off his guilt. Expiated it. Cleansed the
money. Lost it.

There was no better guilt-relief mechanism than the ability to take money—this precious thing that was the focus of his life—and
lose it. Gambling wasn’t recreation anymore. It was money exorcism.

By 1995, the stock market had become a gambling outlet for many people. But Louis wouldn’t have been caught dead playing the
market. He could have day-traded or traded options, but screw that. Louis didn’t buy stocks he couldn’t control. That was
for scrubs. But gambling was cool, and he was gambling on football and baseball and basketball and blackjack even though he
tended to lose whatever he gambled. But it didn’t matter because the more he lost the more he bet, and the more he bet the
more he lost, and then he would bet and lose and it would go on and on.

Sometimes he would drive down to Atlantic City on week-nights, just for the night, with Sally Leads or a friend from Staten
Island named Danny. They wouldn’t book a room. They’d book a chair at the tables. Then they’d do an all-nighter playing blackjack.
That was his game. He’d sometimes play a little craps, but he stayed with blackjack because it gave you a chance. It wasn’t
for scrubs, like the slots. Louis was no scrub. He’d do a little card counting. Counting tens and aces. After all, he wasn’t
trying to lose. Quite the contrary.

If you watch for the tens and the picture cards, if you concentrate, you have an edge over the house. That is a mathematical
fact. With an edge, you win in the long run. You can see the cards on the table and figure out what is coming.

And people can see you.

“I used to get a crowd of people watching me. Fifteen hundred a hand. Two thousand a hand. I’d double down on twelve, which
was unheard-of. People used to watch because they had to announce it. ‘Double down on twelve!’ It was a big thing. You never
double down on twelve in blackjack. That’s insane. If you get a ten, you lose. But I used to see tons of tens come out and
I say, ‘No way a ten is coming out.’ I’d double down. I’d get like a seven and I’d win. People would cheer.

“I was the Man. It felt good. They’d give me a room. Two, three Jacuzzis, wet bar, stocked bar, fucking kitchen, living room,
two bedrooms, four bathrooms. Free dinners. They used to send bottles of Cristal and fruit baskets up to the fucking room.
They picked me up in Staten Island in a limo one time. They gave me Knicks tickets. I used to go to the back room, see the
pit bosses.

“‘Hey, Lou, how’s everything? Got your lucky hat on?’

“‘Yeah, I’m ready to play.’

“Everybody out there is playing twenty, ten dollars a hand. I’d sit down with thirty thousand. I’d make a scene. I used to
like to make a scene. Sometimes I’d go in there with sunglasses on, a bandanna, checkered sweatsuit on, and start betting
three thousand a hand. People used to say, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ I used to hear them. I’d make a fucking show.

“I used to see a lot of rich people in that place. Ted Turner sat right next to me at blackjack. He was playing fifty, a hundred
thousand a hand. Special chips. Ten thousand dollars a chip.

“Stefanie hated to watch me. I used to say, ‘Come on, babe, sit next to me.’ But she used to hate me when I was down there.
I’d turn into somebody else. She couldn’t talk to me when I was gambling. There was no talking to me. I wasn’t laughing. I
used to sit there with the chips, flipping them in and out. My dad sat next to me a couple of times. He was shitting in his
pants—I’m gambling half his yearly salary in one hand. I remember I gave him a thousand to gamble. He took the money. He goes,
‘I lost it.’ It was so funny.”

When he couldn’t go down to Atlantic City there would be the football games on Sundays. First $500 a game. Then $1,000. Then
$5,000. Louis began betting with several bookies, because he bet more than any single bookie could handle.

Louis began to see what it meant to be a Whale—a loser. A pampered loser, taken in a limo to a place to lose money. Except
that he didn’t care. He was losing fuck-you money. It was making him feel good. Stefanie didn’t like it. Fuck her. She didn’t
understand him. It was starting to become an issue—the money. She was benefiting. He was buying her stuff. Why didn’t she
appreciate it?

She was acting as if he were doing something wrong, and that sucked.

STEFANIE
: “It was a fantasy world. At the time it seemed like unreal. Even though it was happening, it was like, ‘My God! How can
this be my life? This is what I do?’ Spend my winter going skiing every weekend, or go to Miami. Every year it was something
else. It just didn’t feel real.

“It was exciting, but I was always worried. I don’t know if it’s just my nature. I’d say to him, ‘You can afford this?’ He’d
say, ‘Yeah, I can. No problem. No problem.’ He’d be working all these hours. I’d say, ‘What kind of place is this? You don’t
get a salary?’ ‘I work on commissions.’ It just didn’t make any sense to me.

“His response to me questioning him about it was that I was not supportive. That’s all he ever said to me, ‘You don’t believe
in me?’ ‘No, it’s not that I don’t believe in you. It’s just that I question it because it doesn’t seem right. It just doesn’t
seem like it’s legal. It just doesn’t seem like this is the way it works, that you can get these people to invest this money,
they lose all their money and you’re making money. I don’t know.’

“The stocks were always shit stocks. He got these people to invest in them and all these complaints are coming in. Maybe after
the second or third time he switched jobs. I started to feel it wasn’t so kosher, it just didn’t seem to make sense for this
to be a legal profession. I said, ‘I can’t imagine this is legal.’ And he used to say, ‘Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking
about. You don’t believe in me.’”

Times were so great that it barely made a ripple in Louis’s world when Hanover Sterling, his beloved alma mater, went out
of business.

It happened early in 1995, not long after Louis got back from the Caribbean. First came whispers, picked up by financial columnist
Dan Dorfman, that Hanover was under SEC investigation. Then all hell broke loose. The Hanover house stocks collapsed, and
so did Hanover. Roy had a box on those stocks, but somebody had busted the box, just smashed it on the floor. It wasn’t supposed
to happen. Louis went over to Pine Street to see for himself. Roy, his mentor, was saying goodbye. It was sad. Louis went
back to Brod. “I didn’t want to be there because I left him like two years ago so I felt funny. He was standing at the door,
while everybody had to leave with their shit, because Nasdaq was coming over. They came over with video cameras,” said Louis.

From what Louis had heard, Roy was simply overwhelmed by something that wasn’t supposed to be a factor, not even remotely,
at Hanover—the market. Yep, the free market in stocks, the Real Wall Street, had profited at Hanover’s expense. Hanover was
shorted, and Roy miscalculated—he fought the short-sellers. They profit by selling stocks they don’t own, in the hope of eventually
buying back the stocks at a lower price. For chop houses, whose rips depend on keeping prices high, short-selling can be a
calamity. It means that somebody is flooding the market with shares, driving down the price. Roy kept on buying, to keep the
price from dropping. It didn’t work. “His balls were bigger than his pockets,” said Louis. “The shorts just kept on shorting
and shorting and shorting. Roy probably figured he’d keep the price up for a few days and they’d have to cover [buy the shares
they had sold short] and fuck them. But those short-sellers ripped [the Hanover stocks] to shreds. They have a lot of money,
those guys. A. T Brod shorted the shit out of them too. Everybody started shorting Hanover stocks once they started going
down. Roy probably ticked off somebody and they crushed him. I felt bad.”

Sure, the shorts had swarmed over Hanover like vultures on carrion. But the only reason they were able to do that was because
Hanover was selling house stocks—chop stocks. Stocks that Hanover controlled, that were really not worth very much, but had
been driven upward by all the ways Louis was using at Brod—ways that he had learned at Hanover. You can’t have a rip unless
the stock is worth very little to begin with, and then is sold for a hell of a lot more than it is worth.